Thursday, February 26, 2009

Nothing special about the US hardcover (first image), and not entirely sure what to think about the UK paperback (second image), but this leaves me wondering if the red / blue distinction doesn't register as strongly outside the US as it does in it. Right and Left always worked fine for me...

I like the idea of the UK hardcover but I must agree the blue part is read before than the red lines. Unfortunately it didn't work.

About the red/blue distinction, here in Brazil it doesn't make the same political sense. We can understand as opposite sides, teams or rivals, maybe good (blue) vs. evil (red). Left vs. Right works better, I suppose.

the worst is the one with the statue of liberty. All the others work and have some little things about them that make them different. The first cover is obviously the most marketable one in it's readability and clarity of message.

In Canada, red=left and blue=right, but only in relation to the two largest political parties (Liberal red; Conservative blue). Orange is used for the far left party, the NDP. Etc. So yes, the red/blue shift in the US can be confusing outside US borders. (Every time I hear 'red state' on TV, I think that they are liberal! There's also the idea of communist=red...)

So, arrows work much better. Not sure if the other images are effective (they say 'patriotism' more than 'political leanings.') Though the images do work with the UK subtitle.

Well (as the linked Wikipedia page points out), the use of red/blue to signify right/left in the US only came about fairly recently--post-2000 election, and is based on the colors used by TV stations to represent Republican and Democratic wins on the electoral map in that and subsequent elections. So it makes sense that other countries wouldn't have that distinction (and I know older Americans who find the current association of Republicans with red to be a bit ironic, given the history of red being associated with communism.)

I like the UK paperback best, in part because it doesn't rely on the overused red-white-and-blue color scheme to signal that this is a book about American politics.